Is That The Ocean?

All this flooding we've been facing around the Dallas-Fort Worth region of late? It's confusing enough for the grown-ups among us as is. But can you even imagine what it'd be like if you were a kid trying to process all this water around here? It wouldn't make any sense at all.

This isn't just conjecture, either; it's empirically true. And I know this because of the below clip, in which North Texas native Daniel Hopkins — the musician behind the Denim Wonder moniker and, full disclosure, my old colleague at the Dallas Observer — caught his four-year-old son Nigel on camera, just completely not grasping the flooding around the area at all and, in turn, confusing the waterlogged Riverside Golf Course in Grand Prairie for the ocean.

The best part of the video, I think, is that, even after his father corrects him, Nigel's confident in his assertion that what he's seeing at least some sort of massive, permanent waterway — like a river at least.

The clip was shot on Saturday as the Hopkins men were driving along State Highway 360. Says the elder of the two on how he caught it: “Driving up, you could see a little bit of water covering the northern part of the golf course, so I started filming so I could show my wife later how bad it was. I was already rolling when we came up on the 'ocean' in the video.”

In Nigel's defense, that's some serious water action happening out on the fairways. And, sure, he's four — but you can understand his confusion, even if, as of just a few minutes ago, Daniel himself is shouldering the blame for his son's mistake.

“I need to start taking him to other beaches besides Galveston,” Hopkins says. “His mind is going to be blown when he sees a clean beach.”

Pete is the founder, editor and president of Central Track. He is the former music editor of the Dallas Observer. His work has been published in The Daily Beast, Deadspin, LA Weekly, Village Voice, Spin Magazine, The Miami Herald and The Toronto Star, among other major publications. The Association of Alternative Newsweeklies has honored his long-form narrative writing and his blogging efforts alike. In 2009, NBCDFW.com named him one of the 25 Most Interesting People in DFW, a fact he remains all too eager to bring up at dinner parties.